


Premonition

by Severina



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 20:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1110946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Okay," Daryl said after a long moment.  "You know that's crazy, right? Dead people walkin' around?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Premonition

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's hc_bingo for the prompt "nightmares"
> 
> * * *

Glenn jerked awake, blinking into the darkness, his body drenched in sweat, still hearing the snarls and moans. In the space of one heartbeat to the next he realized something – or someone – was holding him down. The weight was stifling, overpowering, and when he gasped he was sure he breathed in the rank odor of the dead. The smell got him moving, and he thrashed out with everything in him to get free. He had to get free. If the walker bit him he'd get infected, he'd die, he'd-- 

"Glenn!"

Glenn blinked again, the voice finally penetrating the fog of terror that surrounded him. The voice that, he knew, had been calling out to him for at least a full minute. He relaxed suddenly, let his body go limp, but it was still a few more seconds before Daryl finally released him.

"What," Daryl said slowly, "the everlovin' hell?"

Glenn swiped his sweaty hair from his brow before crawling half over Daryl to turn on the bedside lamp. His gaze quickly swept the corners of the room, but of course there was nothing in the room but the things he expected to find – the full length mirror propped against the wall, the old battered armoire that had belonged to Daryl's mother and weighed about five hundred pounds, the trunk that stored their extra pillows and blankets. 

He let out a shaking breath, slumped back against the pillows. His throat felt dry, raw and sore, and he wondered if he'd been screaming in his sleep. No, he corrected mentally. He wondered just how _long_ he'd been screaming in his sleep. "Dream," he muttered. "Just a dream."

"Must've been one hell of a fuckin' dream," Daryl said from beside him. "You clocked me a good one."

Glenn frowned and pushed himself up on the pillows, looked over to take in the blossoming bruise on Daryl's cheekbone. "Holy shit," he said. 

"Yeah, you got a hell of a right hook," Daryl said. He poked at the skin of his cheek experimentally, winced at the pain. "You forget I'm the badass in this family?"

"I'm sorry," Glenn said. He leaned over to brush his lips against the purpling splotch on Daryl's cheek. "Better?"

"You're gonna have to do a lot better than that," Daryl said teasingly. But he made no move to slide across to the other side of the bed, made no attempt to claim a longer kiss. Instead, he took his hand, twined their fingers together. "Wanna talk about it?"

When they first moved in together, it was Daryl who had the bad dreams. He never told Glenn what they were about, but he didn't have to. Glenn already knew that he'd had a knock-down drag-out fight with his brother when he'd finally come out of the closet and announced he was moving in with some scrawny Asian kid, and the dreams always came the night after Merle called them on the phone drunk as a skunk or needed to get bailed out of jail or stood outside their little apartment complex screaming racist and homophobic obscenities at the window. 

Daryl's bad dreams were at least _sensible_ dreams. 

Glenn sighed. "So all the dead people rose up and started walking. They were like… rotting corpses, and they'd try to bite you, and if they bit you, you died and became a walking rotting corpse too."

"Okay," Daryl said after a long moment. "You know that's crazy, right? Dead people walkin' around?"

"I know!" Glenn said. He huffed out a shaking laugh, but in his mind's eye he could still see the greying flesh, the decaying bodies; still hear the snap of teeth and the eerie moans of the undead. "It sounds crazy, when you say it out loud with the lights on. But it was… it _felt_ super real."

"Well," Daryl said, slinging an arm around his neck and pulling him close, "if any walking dead show up here, I'll take care of 'em for ya."

Glenn let himself be tugged into Daryl's embrace, snuggled closer into the body he'd come to know so well. Daryl smelled of sweat and the lingering scent of Irish Spring, not rotting flesh. And when he pressed his lips to Daryl's neck, he felt only the scratch of unshaven skin. Daryl's heart thumped confidently beneath his palm, and it belonged to him.

Glenn relaxed slowly, closed his eyes. "Deal," he said. But no matter how ridiculous the whole idea was, he still reached out to wrap a hand around Daryl's bicep when he felt Daryl reach for the lamp. "But let's leave the light on tonight anyway, okay?"

* * *

In a meeting room below the city, Dr. Jenner sat up straighter when his wife took the podium.

"Ladies and gentlemen," she said, "we've just received confirmation that Wildfire has gone global."


End file.
